


Asking the Big Questions

by Siria



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 14:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18251828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: "You can't just ask a priest that!" Ryan said, poking Shane in the shoulder with a finger. "That's against the rules.""Is not," Shane said."Is… is," Ryan said.





	Asking the Big Questions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trinityofone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone/gifts).



> For Trinityofone, a birthday gift. Thanks to Sheafrotherdon for reading over it!

"You can't just ask a priest that!" Ryan said, poking Shane in the shoulder with a finger. "That's against the rules."

"Is not," Shane said. 

"Is… is," Ryan said. Grammar was difficult when you'd had three of the pink drinks, but in Ryan's defence, Shane had told him that they were delicious. (And they _were_. Delicious. And _pink_.)

"Look." Shane picked up the menu from the slightly sticky diner table and poked Ryan in the side with one tattered laminate corner. "Look, it's fine because priests answer questions all the time, I'm pretty sure that's in the job description, you know, you're scrolling through the—"

"There aren't job ads for _priests_ —"

"—and it's a question with th… th…" Shane paused and frowned and Ryan remembered that Shane had had three of the pink drinks, too, and sure he was unnecessarily tall but even if the bone stilts were hollow there was only so many places you could stash the pink. He tried again, enunciating his words very carefully, each syllable separate. "The-o-log-i-cal im-pli-ca-tions. That's what a priest is for, is theological implications. That and the hats."

Ryan thought he saw a problem with that—or did he? It'd been a long time since he'd been to Sunday School, and it was almost two in the morning, and he really wanted, like, a burger as big as his head. A burger as big as _Shane's_ head. Ooh, or tacos, only this was a diner in eastern Wyoming, and if it served tacos they'd probably be the kind that would make Ryan's abuela cry. 

Ryan didn't want his abuela to cry. He told Shane that. 

Shane furrowed his brow. "Your abuela would actually cry if I asked a priest if there was a Bigfoot on Noah's Ark?"

The server showed up at their booth then with coffees and took their orders with what Ryan would, many hours later, would realise was a whole lot of patience. 

("Ma'am, hello ma'am, we would like _coffee_. Coffee for both of us, the kind with the caffeine in it if you've got that, and I will have a burger the size of his head, and I am not being metaphorical here. Thank you."

"Coffee! Yes, please and thank you to the coffee, my good lady. Also…" Shane held out both hands, cupped together to make one very large bowl, and said in a conspiratorial tone, "This many pierogis with the cheese.")

"Anyway, _anyway_ ," Shane said when the coffee arrived, "anyway, look, either there were at least two Bigfoots—"

"Bigfeet—"

"Foots! Two of 'em on the Ark! Otherwise what, what, you're saying that the ancestral Bigfoot crafted scuba diving equipment that would let them breathe underwater for forty days and forty nights and that"—Shane paused to dump a truly disgusting amount of sugar into his mug of coffee—"is where shit would get ridiculous."

"I can't tell if you have a point," Ryan said mournfully. He took a swig of his coffee, which absolutely tasted like the kind of coffee that had been sitting around for a couple of hours in an all-night diner in a part of Wyoming whose biggest claim to fame was the fact that a pack of albino chupacabras was said to stalk the local sugar beet fields. It wasn't good, that was Ryan's point. "I also can't tell if you don't have a point."

"I have a straw," Shane said. "That's _like_ having a point."

The server arrived with their food. Shane's pierogis looked like the kind of pierogis you got when someone who'd never seen or tasted an actual pierogi in the wild decided to make one. Ryan had ordered hash browns. Both plates were topped with cheese a colour that even Ryan—who'd once had a frat brother get diagnosed with actual, no-lie, fingers-crossed scurvy—had never seen associated with a foodstuff before. He squinted at it. It was _bright_.

"Do you have sunglasses?" he asked Shane.

"Why would I want sunglasses?" Shane replied amiably. He was dousing the top of his nuclear cheese pierogis with hot sauce, which was one way of dealing with the problem, but Ryan didn't know if it was the _right_ way of dealing with the problem. "It's the witching hour in Wyoming, buddy, and anyway why would I want to be less able to see your face?" 

Shane stopped mid-squeeze and looked up at Ryan, a stricken look on his face for a moment before his eyes did the crinkly thing that Ryan liked so much. He started to laugh, his whole body shaking with mirth. "Oh shit, those pink things did a _number_ on me, dude. I didn't mean to say that bit out loud."

"Because of attracting the witches," Ryan said sagely around a mouthful of dubiously cheesy hash browns. Not that he had any proof that saying the phrase 'witching hour' out loud was the kind of thing that would draw your average sorceress to a roadside diner in the wilds of the West, but vigilance, constant vigilance, or whatever. 

"Nope," Shane said, stirring his pierogis. 

Ryan peered at him. "What?"

"The other thing."

"Huh?" Ryan was either still too drunk to be having this conversation, or not drunk enough. He wavered, debating internally, and then took another slug of his coffee. 

"You know," Shane said, waving the tines of his fork at Ryan. "The bit where I think your face is attractive. Keep _up_ , Bergara."

"Oh," Ryan said. He thought about that some. "You do?"

"Yeah," Shane said. He took a bite of pierogi. "Oh, this is a taste abomination. This is like, the inverse of your face. It's a gustatory crime. As a Polish-American, I am appalled and outraged and offended and all that other stuff." He took another big bite of pierogi. 

"Thank you? I think. And you know, same." 

It was Shane's turn to squint. "You think _my_ face is attractive?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?" Ryan crunched his way through the crispiest, most burnt bits of the hash browns. His favourite. 

"Well, you said 'same'," Shane said, "which _is_ ambiguous, so in the interest of clarification, I'd just like to ask—"

"Last weekend I had a pretty explicit dream about going down on you," Ryan said. "Which was like, maybe only 30% inspired by how tight your skinny jeans were that day, big guy." He snorted into his coffee. _Big guy_. He was hilarious. 

"Props to you, that was pretty unambiguous," Shane said. His fork was frozen halfway to his mouth; one malformed pierogi wobbled perilously atop it. He was blinking a lot. "Are… did you just say you—"

Ryan nodded. "Most definitely. I mean maybe I wouldn't have _said_ what I'm saying without, you know…"

"The pink drinks," Shane supplied. 

"Them, and the Bigfeet—"

"Bigfoots—" 

"Bigfeet conversation. But you know, interests of honesty, yadda yadda," Ryan said, polishing off the last of his food, "I'd make out with you a time or three or seven. And I'd definitely blow you if, you know, you're down with that."

"The song said _go west_ ," Shane said slowly, gazing off into the middle distance, "but only now do I appreciate its full genius. Wyoming: definitely west of Chicago. A bisexual prophecy. I am humbled before it."

"Anyway, if you get the check, we can go make out in the back of the truck," Ryan suggested. 

Shane got a to-go box for his pierogi, which was the kind of dubious life decision that Ryan would have queried—but he had far more important things to concern himself with just then.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Asking the Big Questions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20718014) by [Shmaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor), [wingedwords (gunpowderandlove)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunpowderandlove/pseuds/wingedwords)




End file.
